Friday Finds: Endangered Species

You know how you come across things in that free association way that is my downfall on the Internet? Seriously. It’s the reason I can look up bomb-sniffing dog training and somehow end up reading all about the mating habits of the South American Tree Climbing Water Buffalo.

Which is my way of saying I can’t remember who or what linked to National Geographic photographer Joel Satore‘s project to record studio photographs of all the endangered species in captivity.

The goal of the project is to show what’s at stake. Some of these species only exist in captivity, some of them in such small numbers that they won’t exist at all anymore.

I had no idea about that last bit, that zoos have to make difficult decisions based on limitations of breeding numbers and plain old finances. Sometimes a species just can’t be saved, and sometimes they have to just let it go in order to put resources into saving species that have a better chance.